NORWALK – A former La Pluma Elementary PTA president faces as much as 10 years in state prison for stealing people’s personal information to get credit cards and deposit others’ checks in her bank account.

Kelly Coleen Mahaffey’s 57 victims included her dead mother, in whose name she opened a credit card account, and a 6-year-old girl whose college savings account number was in a notebook found in Mahaffey’s La Mirada home.

On Monday, a jury convicted Mahaffey, 44, of grand theft of a $4,650 check belonging to her neighbor’s daughter, possession of methamphetamine, multiple identifying information theft, theft of access card information with intent to use it fraudulently, grand theft of lost property, second-degree commercial burglary, forgery and nine counts of identity theft.

All 16 counts are felonies.

Mahaffey, who is out on $100,000 bond, will be sentenced in Norwalk Superior Court on July 2. The prosecution had asked that she be remanded into custody but Judge Philip Hickok increased her bail instead to $100,000.

She could get probation or up to at least 10 years in prison, according to Deputy District Attorney Lalit Kundani.

“I am extremely pleased that the jury saw through her deception,” he said. “No one was immune from her deception, including her dead mother (Pam Conley). … She didn’t care about anyone’s name but her own. Whether you were 6 or dead, she didn’t care.”

Kundani said a credit card account was opened online in Conley’s name three weeks after she died and it was activated using Mahaffey’s cell phone.

He said Mahaffey also deposited more than $10,000 of her neighbors’ checks in her bank account, and paid more than $12,000 of her credit card debt and bought $551 worth of Christmas gifts using another woman’s credit card number. The presents were mailed to Mahaffey’s house.

“She was doing Christmas shopping for other people but billing Jackie Byard for it,” Kundani said.

Mahaffey, who testified in her defense, couldn’t explain how the checks ended up in her bank account. She denied using drugs.

She said she thought the check belonging to a neighbor’s daughter was hers.

She said she was having computer problems to the extent that she got two new computers. She also said her car had been broken into and some of her mail went missing.

Among the items deputies discovered during a search of her house were two notebooks that contained 57 names with their accompanying personal information, from Social Security numbers to birthdates.

Mahaffey said she got other people’s mail and returned it to the sender the first couple times. She said she was concerned when she kept getting mail and went online where she found the names and other information.

Kundani asked who would go to the trouble to put $10,000 in Mahaffey’s bank account and pay off $12,000 of her credit card debt?

He also pointed out that the computer she said she was having trouble with was a Dell and not the two computers seized by deputies. Investigators found software that hides IP addresses, and other software that’s designed to wipe out a hard drive, he added.

During the trial, Kundani focused on 14 victims. They included the Wolcotts, who lived next door to Mahaffey; a 6-year-old girl whose mother was in the La Pluma PTA; Byard, who used her credit card at a fall 2006 book sale hosted by the PTA; and a Michigan woman, Tammie Felk.

Kundani said Felk, who didn’t know Mahaffey, found out last spring that a Nordstrom Visa account was opened in her name and it was not being paid.

“Nordstrom told her (Felk) there is a collection action against her. She said, `What is Nordstrom?’ ” Kundani said.

He said the department store was sending notices about the account to Mahaffey’s address.

Andrea Wolcott, whose parents live next to Mahaffey, testified that she found out a $4,650 check on her mortgage account was made out to Mahaffey. Bank surveillance cameras and bank records showed Mahaffey depositing the check in her Washington Mutual account.

Wolcott’s mother, Susan, was surprised to see her husband’s name, his Social Security number, their retirement account number and their health insurance ID number in one of the notebooks.

Ruby Gonzales started working for the company in 1991. Since then she has written about cities, school districts, crimes, cold cases, courts, the San Gabriel River, local history, anime, insects, forensics and the early days of the Internet when people still referred to it as the "information superhighway." Her current beat includes breaking news, crimes and courts for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star News and Whittier Daily News. When not in crime reporter mode, she frequents the remaining bookstores in the San Gabriel Valley, haunts craft stores or gets dragged to eateries by a relative who is a foodie.

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